Pope Francis bids farewell to problematic chief assistant

Pope Francis bid farewell Tuesday to the Vatican’s No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was blamed for many of the gaffes and problems of the papacy of Benedict XVI. And at a ceremony inside the Apostolic Palace, Francis welcomed his new chief collaborator, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a career diplomat who was sent from the Holy See to Venezuela during Bertone’s tenure.

The handover represented a tangible sign of change for the Vatican following Bertone’s scandal-marred term, which climaxed with the 2012 theft of Benedict’s papers by his butler. But many other problems of Benedict’s reign — from his rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop to the Vatican’s response to the 2010 sex abuse scandal — have been pinned on Bertone.